OPINION:
A battle of perceptions has been underway since rioting began on June 6 in Los Angeles over the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigrants.
The footage of burning vehicles and people throwing concrete blocks from an overpass to smash police car windshields might lead viewers to conclude that the “peaceful protests” have not been so peaceful.
You might even think President Trump was right to nationalize 2,000 troops from California’s National Guard and send in 700 Marines to protect federal buildings and quell the violence.
If, however, you are California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is hoping to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2028, you blame Mr. Trump for the days of rioting and say he “escalated” it by increasing law enforcement.
Mr. Newsom sued Mr. Trump for lending a hand in restoring civility and got a judge to issue an order halting the deployments. However, an appeals court upheld, at least temporarily, the president’s right to nationalize National Guard troops.
In a June 9 post on X, Hillary Clinton castigated Mr. Trump for sending troops “following peaceful demonstrations. … Trump’s goal isn’t to keep Californians safe. His goal is to cause chaos.”
Likewise, Sen. Cory A. Booker, New Jersey Democrat, said, “A lot of these peaceful protests are being generated because the president of the United States is sowing chaos.” This is like blaming a cop on the beat for interfering with a mugging.
On Tuesday, Mr. Newsom made out Mr. Trump, not the rioters, to be the real threat to public order.
“Democracy is next,” the governor warned. “Democracy is under assault right before our eyes — the moment we’ve feared has arrived.”
Given incendiary rhetoric like this, it wasn’t surprising when protests spread to several other cities. On Saturday, a nationwide “No Kings” protest was slated in more than 1,000 cities to coincide with the military parade in Washington to honor the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army’s founding.
June 14 is also Mr. Trump’s birthday, hence the “No Kings” optics.
Major media are warning the public not to believe their own eyes and ears. CNN’s chief media analyst, Brian Stelter, said the footage of the L.A. riots on social media is so misleading that it should be discounted altogether.
“When you log on to X or even Facebook, you search L.A. riots, if you want to believe there is rioting happening right now, you can go down that rabbit hole and believe those lies,” he said on “Laura Coates Live” on CNN. “It exists online even though it doesn’t exist in real life.”
It doesn’t? You could say that about anything already reported.
As podcaster Stephen Miller notes, this is the same playbook used by the media when they covered up President Biden’s mental meltdown. Following the lead of White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the media labeled real video footage of multiple Biden incidents as “cheapfakes,” a play on the term “deepfakes,” which are CGI-generated false imagery.
The media seem to think the public has forgotten how they spun the deadly 2020 George Floyd riots. Footage of the CNN reporter in front of a burning building while insisting the protests were “mostly peaceful” still resonates.
One of the most ludicrous spins last week came from the Los Angeles Times, which noted Thursday that not all of Los Angeles was burning, just the downtown area.
“The images flowing out of Los Angeles over nearly a week of protests against federal immigration raids have cast America’s second largest city as a terrifying hellscape, where lawbreakers rule the streets and regular citizens should fear to leave their homes,” the Times said in a front-page article. “In the relentless fever loop of online and broadcast video, it does not matter that the vast majority of Los Angeles neighborhoods remain safe and secure.”
I’m all for curbing what has come to be known as “doom scrolling,” but this is ridiculous.
Los Angeles has approximately 469 square miles, and Los Angeles County spans about 4,700 square miles. That’s a lot of “peaceful” real estate, but so what?
The Times’ selective take is like saying the Japanese shouldn’t have been overly concerned over the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 because 99.9% of the rest of Japan was fine.
On June 10, Los Angles Mayor Karen Bass declared a “local emergency” and nightly curfew. She did so after five days of violence, including the looting of 23 businesses and what she termed “extensive widespread vandalism.”
The mayor’s declaration followed Mr. Newsom’s lead, blaming the “escalation” on immigration law enforcers and Mr. Trump.
On Tuesday, Mr. Newsom gave a speech saying Los Angeles was essentially fine until Mr. Trump’s deployments “inflamed a combustible situation.”
In 2020 and again in 2021, a federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, was attacked by rioters who assaulted federal employees.
In Seattle, protesters took over a six-block area of the city from June 8 until July 1, 2020, declaring it a police-free zone. Two people were fatally shot before city officials finally reasserted authority.
This time, when protesters targeted federal buildings in Los Angeles, they found them guarded by the Trump-sent deployments.
It’s good when leaders learn from history not to repeat mistakes.
• Robert Knight is a columnist for The Washington Times. His website is roberthknight.com.